The Tape Remains The Same: (Circa 1984)

Mikey Ladano over at his Fantastic site covers a ton of stuff musically and he’s a great reviewer who at times dabbles in Movie Reviews but also writes about his past which he has called Getting More Tale.

Mikes one post titled #519: Mistakes I Made Fixing Broken Tapes totally brought back the time that my good pal of over 40 years Tbone bought the first 5 David Lee Roth fronted Van Halen releases on cassette tape sealed for just under $20 back in 1984…

Lemme tell ya about…..

Too make a long story even longer ….January 1984 I lent Tbone my vinyl copy of VH’s 1984. This was Tbones first Dabble with Halen and he liked what he heard! So much so he quickly purchased a copy of 1984 for himself!

It wasn’t too much long after that T got the Halen Itch so one day over lunch at school he told me “I’m going to buy all the Halen albums TODAY!”

Whut? …

So after lunch we split from High School and off we headed to our local Shopping Mall which was and still is called Intercity. We parked and headed into Sears to cut over to the mall and head into A&A Records so Tbone could drop some cash on Dave Halen!

But before and If Tbone’s good luck couldn’t get any better we came across two Bins stuffed with Cassette Tapes One Bin had basically a bunch of shit tapes marked for $2.99. The only one worth mentioning Ironically was an Sammy Hagar Greatest Hits Tape called Cruisin And Boozin. The next Bin was stuffed with a bunch of $9.99 cassette tapes (current rock at the time)like AC/DC /Def Leppard/Quiet Riot and bands of that ilk. The big score in the $9.99 Bin was that there was the first 5 Van Halen tapes sitting there waiting for Tbones hands to grab them up!

Tbone paused for a second took a look around and told me to watch for Sears staff sniffing around the area we were in. Basically I was on “Watch” Duty. Alert T of any incoming Sears Staff headed our way!

Next thing you know Tbone digs into the Cheapie Bin’s and pulls out a handful of Crap tapes all priced $2.99 and manage’s to peel off the stickers (quicker than a Monkey peeling a banana) and transfer them to the other bin where the Halen Tapes were all marked $9.99 and T than proceeded to place the $2.99 stickers over the $9.99 Stickers that were the VH cassette’s.

What a friggin Genius move before my eyes! TBone did this to all the Halen Tapes …

Son of a Beeatch! I quickly did the Math on the Halen purchases and I DID pay at least $9.99 each for those Halen albums on Vinyl…..

In other words….

Deke’s 6 Van Halen albums on vinyl back in the early 80’s. $9.99 Times 6=$59.94….

Tbone was like a Giddy Pig In Shit that Day and we blew off the afternoon classes and drove all over Tbay that afternoon and everyone heard Hang Em High blaring from Tbones car whether they wanted to hear it or not!

A friend of the family was a Sears security guard in Thunder Bay in the 80’s.
He’s in an old age home now, but he always talks about these 2 “sticker switchers” that would always slip through the cracks.
He said if I ever heard about them I should tell him.
Now I’m really torn.

(All I can think of is the Library episode of Seinfeld with Mr. Bookman)

Actually. Truth be told, I was hauled in, but apparently my buddy that told me to “stand right there” failed to tell me why.
I was oblivious to the whole thing.
I guess we looked suspicious enough.
He did this while going to the mall with my parents.
Thanks dude.
He was the only one I knew that had MTV though so I put up with his bullshit for that.

I say we switch the lyrics of famous 80’s metal songs to suit the occasion.

2 minutes to sticker switch
Sticker switch in place of Aces High.
Sticker switcher. You’ve been down too long in the midnight sea.
Switching the stickers. Switching the stickers.
We’re not gonna pay that. No we ain’t gonna pay that. We’re not gonna pay that, anymore.

TBone switching the stickers while Deke and a bunch of bikini clad babes watch for the security guards. One is the guy from the ‘Whatta wanna do with your life” from TS video, and the other is Meatloaf from the Kickapoo video.